BUDDENBROOKS
formality, no importunity, no tactless tenderness. A light, discreet kiss upon the forehead, in the presence of the parents, sealed the betrothal. Tony sometimes puzzled over this, the least in the world. Why, she wondered, did his present happiness seem not quite commensurate with the despair into which her refusal had thrown him? He regarded her with the air of a satisfied possessor. Now and then, indeed, if they happened to be alone, a jesting and teasing mood seemed to overcome him; once he attempted to fall on his knees and approach his whiskers to her face, while he asked in a voice apparently trembling with joy, “Have I indeed captured you? Have I won you for my own?” To which Tony answered, “You are forgetting yourself,” and got away with all possible speed.
Soon after the holidays Herr Grünlich went back to Hamburg, for his flourishing business demanded his personal attention; and the Buddenbrooks agreed with him that Tony had had time enough before the betrothal to make his acquaintance.
The question of a house was quickly arranged. Tony, who looked forward extravagantly to life in a large city, had expressed the wish to settle in Hamburg itself, and indeed in the Spitalstrasse, where Herr Grünlich’s office was. But the bridegroom, by manly persistence, won her over to the purchase of a villa outside the city, near Eimsbiittel, a romantic and retired spot, an ideal nest for a newly-wedded pair—“procul negotiis.”—Ah, he had not yet forgotten quite all his Latin!
Thus December passed, and at the beginning of the year ’46 the wedding was celebrated. There was a splendid wedding feast, to which half the town was bidden. Tony’s friends—among them Armgard von Schilling, who arrived in a towering coach—danced with Tom’s and Christian’s friends, among them Andreas Gieseke, son of the Fire Commissioner and now studiosus juris; also Stephan and Edward Kistenmacher, of Kistenmacher and Son. They danced in the dining-
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